Series: Is Dubai the City of Future ? – Part 1

Popular science magazine dubbed Dubai as the city of future. As a fellow entrepreneur I look at it objectively, what is happening in this city in technology space and how one can benefit.

POLICE:Self-driven police cars with facial recognition technology and companion drones will soon be patrolling the posh streets of Dubai as they help the government track and identify suspects. With testing going on for years and robocops helping people in Dubai malls, this is a rather natural transition for the country that is leaving no stone unturned to embrace technology to its fullest and move towards a digital future.

Last month, Dubai also instated world’s very first police bot, known as the Robocop. But unlike many sci-fi movies, the robocops in Dubai are not weaponized to go against the humans. Instead, they have been given the very simple and important task of monitoring tourist activities in the area. Currently, they can only speak two languages – English and Arabic. But according to the officials, they will soon speak more.

In the next five years, Dubai will introduce another model, 10-foot in height and capable of going on a maximum speed of 50mph. And by 2030, it is expected that the country will have 25 percent of the police force as robots.

Roads and Transport Authority It was in 2013 when Dubai’s Road and Transport Authority (RTA) released a statement that they were considering self-driven cars on the streets and wanted to run all the appropriate tests before putting them out.

But it was only in 2016, on the opening day of MENA Transport Congress and Exhibition organized by the RTA that it was revealed there would be trials starting for a 10-seater driverless vehicle. Produced by Easy Mile/ Omnix Company, the trials were done for short distances on pre-decided routes.

Hyperloop One is now hiring for positions in Dubai. We could be the first ones before Silicon Valley to commercially use this hyper speed travel.

In our next week’s article we will look at other government departments and how they are contributing to making Dubai the city of future.

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Hamna Anwar is the director of innovation at Centric, leading projects around digital startups and helping them achieve commercial success with localised business models. She can be reached on hamna.anwar@centric.ae